Recently we had some discussion about whether copyright was necessary,
and how people would be paid to produce works if the world turns out to
be such that copyright enforcement is impossible.
A new paper by cryptographers John Kelsey and Bruce Schneier has been
published which discusses some of the problems copyright may face, and
a cryptographic protocol which would allow payment for at least some kinds
of works.
The idea is basically that people would pay in advance for a work by a
popular author. He might make a couple of chapters available for free,
and then only release the others when he had, say, $50,000 in pledges.
The authors describe how a publisher could act as a trusted intermediary
to collect and hold the pledged fees, transfer them to the author when
the book is released, or refund them if the author fails to make good
on his promise (or if insufficient funds are raised).
The authors recognize the public-goods nature of the funding
The paper is at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/index.html.
Hal